


Hell is a place on earth

by phlintandsteel



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: HOA busybody AU, Ineffable Bureaucracy, M/M, Other, but i laughed while writing it and that's all that matters, good omens gayle waters-waters crossover AU, i feel like i should tag chris flemming even though they're not specifically in this, ineffable husbands, yes it's exactly as ridiculous as it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 08:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19422118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phlintandsteel/pseuds/phlintandsteel
Summary: “And think about joining the neighborhood watch, we meet on Wednesdays!”Crowley immediately turned around as soon as Gabriel let him out of their little encounter, so he just waved the newspaper over his head noncommittally as he headed back into his house.“Who was that you were talking to?” Aziraphale asked, nodding at the kitchen window while he poached their eggs on the stove.“Some cunt.”





	Hell is a place on earth

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse, no explanation for this. @ nitrostreak on tumbler mentioned Ineffable Bureaucracy busybody HOA members, and I couldn’t get the image of Gabriel power walking down the street “Gayle Waters-Waters” style out of my head. So I pulled a Terry Pratchett and split Gayle into two characters for this. Somehow, Crowley and Aziraphale are still basically themselves, just decided to move to the suburbs???... Do they have HOA’s in England? I assume they have something equivalent?
> 
> If anybody knows what the hell I’m doing, please let me know.

Crowley knew Aziraphale would scold him for causing an _incident_ so soon after moving in, so he threw on a silk robe before he sauntered out to grab the morning paper. An article caught his eye, so he found himself pausing on the walkway to skim it. Not the politician in trouble headline, that happened all the time. No, it was the extreme drought in Nigeria that was predicted to wipe out their cocoa crop this year. Now _that_ was something he needed to keep an eye on...

“Morning, neighbor!”

Crowley considered ignoring the man who’d been jogging by and had the nerve to address a stranger wearing sunglasses and silk at 6:30 in the morning. But the man had _stopped_ and was turned fully toward him, so it’d be virtually impossible to pretend he’d not noticed the salutation later...

“Morning,” Crowley replied with a nod of his head, starting to tuck the paper under his arm. He hoped it would tip off the sweatsuit wearing yuppie to the fact that he was headed back inside. Unfortunately the man seemed to take it as Crowley giving him his full attention.

“I’m Gabriel, I live across the street,” the man said as he held out his hand and flashed a set of pearly whites so straight that a dentist had either wept upon seeing them or put his kids through college while working on them.

“Anthony,” Crowley replied back, shaking his hand unenthusiastically, “And I’m...not from around here.” 

Gabriel’s entire face seemed to blink while his smile stayed intact, as if he was processing the out-of-normal response and then dismissing it. 

“Well, I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood, see if you’d thought about joining the watch? We take safety very seriously around here. Almost as seriously as our landscaping!” Gabriel laughed like he’d made some sort of inside joke.

“Landscaping... Ah, yes, quite the spread you’ve got over there,” Crowley said, automatically trying to steer the conversation away from anything that might imply he was agreeing to _group commitments._

It was fascinating watching Gabriel’s body language slide into a display of extreme pride while pretending to humility.

“Yeah, it’s almost like having another full time job, taking care of it all. But my spouse and I, Beelzebub, have won the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Best Lawn’ category six years running, so, it’s worth it,” Gabriel said, turning a bit to survey his own land. He nodded, hands on his hips, with the kind of approval one usually reserves for a child graduating college, before turning back to Crowley. “What about you though? You seem like more of a car guy,” Gabriel supposed, tipping his head toward the antique Bentley parked on the curb. 

“You could say that. I have been known to have a bit of a green thumb though, now and then,” Crowley grinned at him. 

“Excellent! I’d hate to see all Sandalaphon’s hard work go to waste. He was the, uh, _previous owner,”_ Gabriel said as if Crowley wouldn’t have known that. 

Crowley just nodded, wishing he had a glass of wine in his hands right about now. 

“Well, I’ll let you get back to it,” Gabriel finally said, as if the alarm had just beeped on their allotted time for pleasantries, “Oh, but, one quick thing,” he added apologetically as Crowley had already started to step away, “Cars need to be parked in their driveways, not on the street, per code 47 addendum 3 of the HOA you signed at purchase.” 

Crowley just stared at him for a moment, realizing to his dawning horror that the man was completely serious and expecting some sort of affirmative response from him.

“I’ll, um, move it in a jiff. Haven’t got my keys on me...” Crowley finally deadpanned, motioning toward his robe that hid very little, least of all a key ring. 

Gabriel gave him a nod, brightening at the agreement. His already fake smile moved into definite _plastic_ territory. “Excellent. My spouse and I are co-presidents of the association, so we have to set an example, you understand.”

“Oh, of course...examples are to be made, and all that...” Crowley answered, already planning six different ways to try and get under the man’s skin in the future. 

Gabriel laughed again, an annoying, too perfect sound, like he was purposefully conveying his gracious _approval,_ and began to jog backward toward his house, “And think about joining the neighborhood watch, we meet on Wednesdays!”

Crowley immediately turned around as soon as Gabriel let him out of their little encounter, so he just waved the newspaper over his head noncommittally as he headed back into his house. 

“Who was that you were talking to?” Aziraphale asked, nodding at the kitchen window while he poached their eggs on the stove.

“Some cunt.”

<//>

It was a week and a “missed” watch meeting later before Aziraphale met their neighbors across the street himself. He was still unpacking things here and there, going at a leisurely pace, when he decided to work on a few boxes from the garage. They had a couple of lovely bird feeders that he planned on spacing out over the grounds, now that they had a proper lawn. 

“Morning, neighbor!” a cheerful voice greeted him.

Aziraphale turned around with a pleasant smile on his face, knowing that Crowley could be more than a little grumpy sometimes, and that the neighbors were probably not _that_ bad.

“Good morning! You must be Gabriel, you met my husband Anthony last week, I believe?”

“Yes, exactly,” Gabriel beamed, “You must be Mr. Fell?” he asked, motioning to their names on the mailbox.

“Call me A.Z., everyone does,” Aziraphale insisted politely. 

“I’m Beelzebub, and this is our labradoodle, Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She just got in to Oxford, early acceptance,” Beelzebub said with a sort of detached, highbrow tone. “We’re still waiting to hear back from Cambridge and Durham.”

“Fingers crossed,” Gabriel nodded enthusiastically, bringing his hands up and crossing both sets of fingers. 

“Oh, erm...how marvelous,” Aziraphale said, pretty sure those were scholastic institutions for _humans,_ but unwilling to run the risk of being forcibly informed about whatever doggy-daycare versions may exist. 

“Yeah, we’re in an exciting time of our lives...” Gabriel said at almost a sigh, “But anyway, we just wanted to nip over here real quick on our walk and remind you guys about the neighborhood watch. We meet Wednesdays at 7:30, BYOB, bring your own bruschetta,” Gabriel said with a gleaming yet slightly forceful smile. 

“Yeah, it’d be a shame if something happened to your house while nobody was looking,” Beelzebub said. 

“I beg your pardon?” Aziraphale frowned, thinking they couldn’t possibly have meant that the way it sounded... 

“Oh, and by the way? Bird feeders are a violation of your HOA,” Gabriel said as the two of them turned and walked off, fake smiles still firmly in place.

Aziraphale looked down at the bird feeder still clutched in his hands.

“Oh dear…”

<//>

When Crowley got home that evening, having needed a good dose of terrorizing the roadways that Aziraphale refused to join him for, he immediately took note of the additional things his husband had unpacked that afternoon. 

“I thought you were going to hang a couple feeders in the front too?” he commented, seeing they were all placed strategically around the backyard instead. 

“Apparently, any device that houses, attracts, or feeds 'nuisance animals’ is forbidden from front lawns by the Home Owner’s Association,” Aziraphale informed him. 

“That _prick.”_

“Also, we may have been threatened with vandalism if we don’t make an appearance at the next neighborhood watch meeting...”

“Oh, that’s it,” Crowley glowered, throwing his hands up, “That asshole needs to go down. First my car, then insisting we join the watch, now _this?”_

“Dear, I’m as... _frustrated_ with the situation as you are, but they haven’t actually _done_ anything to us as of yet,” Aziraphale pointed out. 

“And winning that annual Lawn & Garden competition out from under their noses won’t be _doing_ anything _to them_ either,” Crowley grinned, sharp and feral. 

“Give me strength…” Aziraphale muttered under his breath as he pinched the brow of his nose, _“Crowley,_ you cannot be out yelling at the shrubbery at all hours of the night or _we’ll have to move again.”_

Crowley rolled his eyes, but he sat down with a huff. “Fine, fine. I’ll just have to go old school then...” He suddenly stood up almost as abruptly as he’d sat, making a line for the garage. “Start saving the egg shells from breakfast. And banana peels. I’m going to go dig up that spade you gave me for my birthday last year. Looks like I’ll actually get to use it now!”

“Love, I hope you know what you’re doing...” Aziraphale called out. 

There was a thud and a scraping sound against the concrete. 

“The only way to beat these kinds of people is at their own game, Aziraphale,” Crowley said, sticking his head around the corner of the door.

“Which means _playing their game,”_ Aziraphale sighed. 

“Hey, leave the passive aggressive landscaping to me, you handle the overbearing politeness,” Crowley said, brandishing the found spade. “No one’s asking you to do anything you wouldn’t normally anyway,” he added cheekily. 

Aziraphale gave him a flat look, but it dissipated quickly. “Oh, could we have daffodils, then? I’ve always loved daffodils...so bright and cheery...”

“For you, love? Anything.”

<//>

Crowley stood in the kitchen with the lights off, sipping a glass of Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac while he watched Gabriel leave for his morning jog. 

Three houses down, the man stopped and pulled a ruler out of his sock to measure the grass in front of Michael and Uriel’s house.

Crowley smiled wide, his eyes flashing in the dark. 

<//>

“Beez? Are you seeing this?” Gabriel asked, frowning as he looked out their front window. 

“What am I looking at?... Oh,” Beelzebub grimaced as they came over. “What kind of idiot paints only one of their wood columns a different shade of white than the others?”

“I know, right? They have to look at it too!” Gabriel agreed in disbelief. 

Beelzebub put a steadying hand on his arm. “They already RSVP’d for the watch meeting this week, we can bring it up with them tomorrow.”

“I’m closing all the blinds until then,” Gabriel said with a fuss, already reaching for the cord, “Here, hold my kombucha.” 

<//>

Crowley and Aziraphale had already taken seats and made themselves as comfortable as they could reasonably be expected to be when Beelzebub called a brief halt to the meeting. 

“That’s my son, Hastor,” they said by way of introduction as a backpack wearing teen came through the front door, “He was a C-section, my choice. I was tired of not being able to give 150% at my spin class, so we scooped him out _super_ early,” Beelzebub said in a matter of fact manner, addressing Crowley and Aziraphale. They didn’t give either one a chance to reply though before turning to Hastor, who was hovering in the door way. 

“So, Hastor, are you valedictorian or salutatorian?” they asked coolly. 

Hastor grimaced as he said, “Salutatorian...”

“There’s the door,” Beelzebub pointed back the way he came without looking at Hastor, absolute seriousness on their face. 

“Enjoy California with your crazy American aunt,” Gabriel said, making a shooing motion as Hastor hesitated. 

As soon as the door was shut behind him, Gabriel and Beelzebub went right on with the neighborhood watch meeting as if nothing had happened. 

Crowley and Arizaphale shared a dumbfounded look. 

Michael gave her report of all suspicious activity that had taken place in the last week. Several incidents of which were directly attributable to Crowley, Aziraphale knew. He kept his peace though. 

“So, we’re all in agreement that we’ll continue to keep an extra sharp eye out for that blue Honda. Remember, if you see something, say something.”

Crowley opened his mouth, but Aziraphale pinched the side of his thigh before he could _say anything._

“Excellent. There was one other quick matter that Beelzebub and I wanted to address though, before we call it a night,” Gabriel said, looking right at Crowley. 

Aziraphale sighed. 

“I couldn’t, _we_ couldn’t help but notice the, uh, recent repair you made to your front porch?”

“Ah, yes,” Crowley said nonchalantly, “The... _sun damage_ to one of our columns. What of it?” 

Gabriel tilted his head a little as he smiled, like he was addressing a small child. “Well, it’s just that it doesn’t seem to be the exact same shade as the rest of it?...”

“Oh, it is,” Aziraphale spoke up, “I assure you. Mr. Sandalaphon was kind enough to leave behind his left over paint for us in the garage.”

“Regardless, the color has definitely...shifted, a bit, over time. That can happen with old paint,” Gabriel countered. 

“Hmm, I think I have heard of that before...” Crowley jumped back in, “But I suppose that unless someone’s willing to go toe-to-toe with us arguing over whether white _legally_ matches white, I think we’ll be ok... You know, per the HOA guidelines,” Crowley finished with a half salute of his kale and egg white smoothie, which he had no intention of actually drinking. 

Gabriel’s eye twitched. 

Michael looked back and forth between the two of them briefly, then broke the tension by addressing Beelzebub. 

“Beez, darling, I simply must get the recipe for this granola before we go.”

“Oh, did you like it? It’s an old family recipe,” they answered with a false sweetness, “I’ll email it to you. Just have to dig it out of the cupboard first.”

Michael smiled back like someone who’d participated in too many pageants as a child.

Crowley threw up a little in his mouth. 

<//>

After everyone had left, Beelzbub growled at the door, shutting it more forcefully than necessary. 

“She’s getting that granola recipe over my dead body...”

“What was the secret ingredient again? Acai berries?” Gabriel asked as he cleared the coffee table. 

“No. The blood of a horse, _fresh,_ stirred widdershins under a full moon.” 

Gabriel paused as he picked up the handheld vacuum from its charging station, “Is that sanitary?”

Beelzebub paused, blinked, and then said in an authoritarian tone, “It’s _organic.”_

“Ah,” Gabriel nodded, getting back to the crumbs in the couch, “Say no more.”

<//>

A month later, things had escalated nicely, to the point that Gabriel was carrying little yellow laminated cards with him on his morning run, to _warn_ anyone who’d left their bins out on the street past pickup time. 

Crowley waited for the man to turn down the next block before he went out and moved the Bentley so that it was parked unevenly in the drive, askew as anything, one tire _on the grass._

Then he hunkered back down in the kitchen, waiting to see the reaction it would get. 

When Gabriel returned from his jog, he stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk for _seventeen minutes,_ his face frozen in a mix of disbelief and horror as he stared at the Bentley. 

Crowley snickered victoriously.

Gabriel finally roused himself, though his face still looked especially blank, and he went directly into his own house. 

“Dear?” Aziraphale called out as he came in from the living room, “Would it be alright if I put the kettle on?”

“What? Of course,” Crowley said, turning away since the show was over anyway. 

“I’d hate to interrupt your brooding, is all,” Aziraphale teased him primly, hovering in the doorway with his hand near the light switch. 

“Er, no, that’s fine. You can turn the lights on, I’m done.”

<//>

Gabriel came to on the floor of the pantry, back against the wall, with empty bottles strewn around his skewed legs. Beelzebub leaned over him, holding out a napkin with a disappointed frown on their face. 

“Sorry,” Gabriel blurted, “Sorry, Beez, I guess I just blacked out from the rage.”

“You drank four bottles of tonkatsu sauce in a row, Gabriel, pull it together.”

<//>

Against Aziraphale’s better judgement, they had Michael and Uriel over for tea one day, so Crowley could gather intel. 

“It’s been hard to trust Gabriel after the incident last summer,” Michael said with a disingenuously sad half a sigh. 

There was a small silence in the room.

“Ok, I’ll bite,” Crowley said as he lolled on the couch, “What incident?” 

“Gabriel faked his own death to have an edible arrangement sent to his house,” Uriel informed them. 

<//>

Crowley was dozing indolently in the patch of sun that hit their bed just right in the mornings, Aziraphale a warm weight at his back, when a high pitched mechanical whine suddenly broke through their heaven. 

Crowley’s eyes opened menacingly in a single blink, then narrowed to slits. 

The noise kept going and going. 

Finally, he shimmied out of Aziraphale’s arms, much to his angel’s protest, and looked out the open window. Across the street, Beelzebub was _aggressively vacuuming their driveway,_ as if the scatterings of nature across the concrete had personally offended them. 

Crowley slammed the window closed, hard enough to crack the sill as he muttered, “They’ll get theirs soon enough...”

Aziraphale just sighed. 

<//>

“Well hey there, neighbor,” Gabriel’s voice came up behind Crowley as he was elbows deep in a rose bush. 

“Afternoon,” Crowley replied, finding it amusing to keep up the facade of their politeness in the face of how much they very obviously hated each other. 

“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Gabriel flashed a smile that looked like it caused him physical pain to try and keep up his casual friendliness with, “How _do_ you get these roses so lush?” 

Crowley didn’t bother to hide the sharpness of his teeth as he answered, “Black Magic.”

<//>

When Crowley and Aziraphale’s house won the Royal Horticultural Society’s award for Best Lawn that year, Gabriel _fucking lost it._

Beelzebub watched from the front steps as he kicked their own mailbox down, hurled their garden sheers through the air, and bashed the weed hacker into the pavement until it was nothing more than pieces of plastic and metal. The sheers landed with a crunch through the windshield of their SUV, but that wasn’t Beelzebub’s main concern at the moment. 

Gabriel fell to his knees in the middle of the lawn and screamed at the sky. 

Crowley and Aziraphale were on their porch across the street, watching with slack jaws, though the surprise on Crowley’s face was decidedly more gleeful than horrified. 

Straightening their spine, Beelzebub marched down to their husband, who’d started to hyperventilate as he held his head in his hands. 

They grabbed hold of his lapels with a little shake, bringing his face in line with theirs. “Get a hold of yourself, Gabriel,” they seethed, “You’re better than this. Pick yourself up off the ground and _suck it up._ You can do this. We’re just going to have to start over, is all.” 

It was the closest to reassuring they ever got, but Gabriel always responded well to it. 

“You’re right,” he said, nodding and taking a gulping breath as if it would steady him, “You’re right, Beez... Ok. We’ll just, _start over,”_ he agreed, taking a few more deep breaths, “I’ll get the lawn mower.”

“I’ll get the petrol,” Beelzebub said with a returning nod, releasing him as he stood. 

They both headed in to the garage. 

Gabriel came back out on their riding mower, driving it out into the street and letting it sit there idling. He headed back inside just as Beelzebub came through the front door, walking backward, dousing everything in petrol as they went. They continued out into the lawn, making a crisscrossed, overlapping pattern as they walked. 

Gabriel came out of the garage with their labradoodle Margaret under one arm and a plastic clicker for lighting candles in the other hand. 

Beelzebub dropped the can of petrol in the middle of the lawn and got on the riding mower, revving it a couple times while Gabriel lit the edge of the grass. Then he climbed on the back behind his spouse, one arm wrapped around their waist as he cried into Margaret’s fur. 

A pentagram burst into flame behind them, quickly spreading to the sidewalk and house.

Beelzebub and Gabriel never looked back as they drove away. 

“...Erm, do you think we should call the fire brigade?...” Aziraphale asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the conflagration.

Crowley pursed his lips and shook his head briefly in a display of unaffectedness. 

“Nah, none of our business, really.” 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If people don't like that I've switched fandoms, I will face Marvel and walk backward into Good Omens.
> 
> (not that anyone has, I just wanted to get to say that)
> 
> :P


End file.
